Globe unveils first season of new era

Lineup includes return of Darko Tresnak to direct world-premiere musical

Judith Light (left) and Stockard Channing in a scene from the Broadway production of Jon Robin Baitz's "Other Desert Cities." The play, a Pulitzer Prize finalist this year, will be produced at San Diego's Old Globe as part of the theater's just-announced 2012-13 season.
— AP

Judith Light (left) and Stockard Channing in a scene from the Broadway production of Jon Robin Baitz's "Other Desert Cities." The play, a Pulitzer Prize finalist this year, will be produced at San Diego's Old Globe as part of the theater's just-announced 2012-13 season.
/ AP

The Old Globe Theatre’s 2012-13 season — the first to be unveiled since a major shift in management — includes a couple of hot recent Broadway properties, a pair of reimagined classics and (as previously announced) the high-profile new musical “Allegiance.”

But the show that seems destined to grab the most immediate attention is another new musical that’s directed by a prominent former Globe artist, and was previously announced — and then dropped — by La Jolla Playhouse.

The director is Darko Tresnjak, previously the Globe’s resident artistic director and artistic chief of its Summer Shakespeare Festival. And the show is the darkly comic musical “A Gentleman’s Guide to Love and Murder.”

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A U-T piece from 2010 about the rights dispute over "A Gentleman's Guide to Love and Murder":

The Playhouse canceled its own staging of that piece two years ago after the show’s creators ran into a rights dispute with the copyright holders to the 1949 Alec Guinness film “Kind Hearts and Coronets.” Both the musical and the movie are based on the same obscure 1907 novel, “Israel Rank.”

That issue has been resolved, says newly appointed Globe managing director Michael G. Murphy, who adds that the Playhouse is “as thrilled for the show to be done in San Diego as we are.”

Murphy and interim artistic adviser Richard Seer headed the season planning, as the Globe continues its national search for an artistic director. Both say they’d been eager to find an opportunity for Tresnjak to work at the Globe again.

Tresnjak, now artistic director of Connecticut’s Hartford Stage (which is co-producing “Gentleman’s Guide”), left the Globe in 2009. He’d had a seemingly complicated professional relationship with former CEO/executive producer Louis G. Spisto, who departed in December to become an independent producer.

Besides “Gentleman’s Guide,” the nine-show Globe season also includes the local premieres of the hit Broadway plays “Good People” and “Other Desert Cities” (just named a Pulitzer Prize finalist); a world-premiere adaptation of Ibsen’s “A Doll’s House” that marks the Globe return of onetime Sledgehammer Theatre leader Kirsten Brandt; the edgy plays “The Brothers Size” and “Be a Good Little Widow”; a “lavish” staging of George Bernard Shaw’s “Pygmalion” on the occasion of that play’s 100th anniversary; “Allegiance,” the much-buzzed musical set in a 1940s Japanese-American internment camp; plus the return of the holiday favorite “Dr. Seuss’ How the Grinch Stole Christmas!”

The full schedule:

“Allegiance — A New American Musical” (Sept. 7 to Oct. 21): Composer-writer-lyricist Jay Kuo and co-writer Lorenzo Thione created this piece with major inspiration from “Star Trek” icon George Takei, who stars with Telly Leung, Tony winner Lea Salonga and the Broadway-seasoned young San Diegan Allie Trimm. Stafford Arima directs.

“Good People” (Sept. 29 to Oct. 28): The play by Pulitzer winner David Lindsay-Abaire (“Rabbit Hole”) focuses on the fallout from an old romance amid hard times in Boston. Paul Mullins (a veteran of the Globe’s Shakespeare fest) directs.

“Pygmalion” (Jan. 12 to Feb. 17, 2013): Broadway veteran Nicholas Martin returns to the Globe after 15 years to direct the Shaw opus, which served as inspiration for the musical “My Fair Lady.”

“The Brothers Size” (Jan. 26 to Feb. 24): Seer describes Tarell Alvin McCraney’s piece about two siblings as “a contemporary play based on West African mythology. (It’s) a wonderful, sort of timeless combination of those two things.” Original director Tea Alagic returns to stage the Southern California premiere.

“A Gentleman’s Guide to Love and Murder” (March 8 to April 14): Writer-lyricist Robert L. Freedman and composer-lyricist Steven Lutvak adapted this story about a Englishman who’s eighth in line for a dukedom, but sets his mind to knocking off the unlucky heirs in his way. (One actor plays all eight.)

“Other Desert Cities” (April 27 to June 2): Seer will direct this piece, still running on Broadway. He says Jon Robin Baitz’s darkly comic family saga, set in Palm Springs, stands with “Good People” as “the best writing on Broadway in the past 10 years.”

“Be a Good Little Widow” (May 11 to June 9): Bekah Brunstetter’s bittersweet comedy is, as Seer puts it, about a young woman “discovering the wisdom of her mother-in-law. Which one rarely does.” No director has been announced for this West Coast premiere.

One other program note: The Old Globe/University of San Diego MFA program, which Seer directs, will stage Shakespeare’s “Measure for Measure” in the Globe’s White Theatre, Nov. 10-18. Ray Chambers directs.